FOCUS ON

Apr 6, 2020

['tactus] 2019 Young Composers' Forum Concert

['tactus] Young Composers' Forum received 94 applications, and the jury has chosen four young composers for the chamber music sessions . The sessions with Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles were held in Mons in November 2019. Due to Corona virus circumstances the rerun concert at Flagey in April 2020 did not happen, but the concert recorded in Mons is online. Our Focus On article tells you more about the pieces and composers.

Christoph Renhart: Échos éloquents

Photographer Ben Viaperalta

”Let us try to figure out the shape of an echo: What is said by an echo is what it does not articulate. The information about the echo itself is to be derived from what is swallowed by it or from the way how the reverberation is distorting the original message. An echo itself might be contoured as the phantasmorgia of a reality of which we might only guess its silhouettes by noticing a deviation to a formerly known content.

Échos éloquents tries to portrait this phenomenon in a sonic way. Sounds are being triggered by preceding sounds and sometimes mirrored in a very blurred and hardly recognisable way. Listening to music is similar to a memory game: we strive towards understanding a context by re-cognizing a theme, a chord, a gesture or whatever else. If someone alters the memory cards while we are playing, it starts to get exciting as we might wish to find out, who caused the mess.

The work itself is a kind of an echo to my work «Miroirs noirs» which pictures another way of describing the same phenomenon. Both work spoon their musical materials—like two sister-volcanos—from one magma chamber. ”

Christoph Renhart‘s works have been played by Klangforum Wien, Hugo Wolf Quartet, Ensemble Kontrapunkte Vienna, Shanghai Sinfonietta, Tonkuenstler Orchestra, Jenaer Philharmonie and Ensemble «die reihe» among others. They were performed at venues such as the Konzerthaus Vienna, the Musikverein Vienna and the Polskie Radio studios in Warsaw. Christoph Renhart has received numerous awards such as the International Nikolaus Fheodoroff Prize in composition, a prize for the composition of a string quartet announced by the Jeunesse, the Hugo Wolf Quartet and the Alban Berg Foundation and a prize for his orchestral work «drei splitter des nordlichts» at the Weimarer Frühjahrstage für zeitgenössische Musik in Germany. He was an invited composer at the Malta International Spring Orchestra Festival 2017 and he was granted the Austrian state scholarship in composition in 2017 as well.

Christoph Renhart studied with Richard Dünser (composition), Annamária Bodoky-Krause and Christiana Perai (piano) at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz. Furthermore he attended a masterclass with Matthias Pintscher and Brad Lubman at the Grafenegg Festival in 2015 and 2017. Since 2018/2019 he teaches music theory as a senior lecturer at the University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz, Austria.

In 2017 a portrait CD with works by Christoph Renhart was released by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF (CD 3218, Edition Zeitton).

Two Characters is an eclectic piece that is part of an ongoing process in discovering new ways of expressing my musical intentions. Both characters contain conversational elements between all the different instruments, while the two separate movements could also be seen as a dialogue.

Daan Geysen is a 21-year old composer and is still studying under Jeroen D’hoe and Maarten Van Ingelgem at Lemmens in Leuven. When Geysen was very young, he started playing French Horn and making electronic music. In high school he studied visual arts, architecture and product design. He also learned a lot from his grandfather, Frans Geysen, with whom he has a very close relationship. Because of these wide interests, he took part in many interdisciplinary projects with artists from different fields. Currently, he is working on an eclectic cycle for two pianos.

Built in arch form as its title this work is inspired by a Plaute’s latin proverb : The One with the Asses. This proverb, taken out of context, makes echoes with an acidic irony to the world news and to our human condition.

Born in 1992 in Charleroi Max Charue is a Belgian composer and percussionist. After a school path focused on percussion which he studied until 2015 in Belgium (Mons) and France (Strasbourg) he turns to composition and enters in the class of Claude Ledoux in Arts².

As percussionist, Max Charue is an ambassador of contemporary music. In 2016 he did the premiere of « Excursions » a Concerto for Percussions and Orchestra from Gwenaël Mario Grisi with the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège under the conducting of Christian Arming and the premiere of « Machine Mécanique (d’Orient désorienté) », the Concerto for Percussions and String Orchestra of Claude Ledoux next to the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie conducted by Jean-François Chamberlan.

In the future he will compose for the next MusMA X in 2020 (for Lutoslawski String Quartet & a percussionist), he’s co-writing a theater-dance-music show with Clément Bernaert with Le Skand (2020), he has the chance to make the orchestration of a new opera of Frederic D’Haene (Premiere in 2020 with Flanders Symphony Orchestra, he has won a call from Ensemble 21 - Premiere at Ars Musica Festival 2020 (tribute to Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs)

In this piece I wanted to explore that borderline that links, in a reciprocal convertibility, the rational and irrational, knowing and recognizing, devotion and distancing, transcendence and rescendence.

A line that is not necessarily a limit, a threshold, but that can be and can create depth; crossing that thickness which is never crystalized and moving forward through a present that, time after time, confirms, denies and/or gives a different meaning to that line.

The line of the distance and the interiority necessary to enter into wild territories of reaction, disorder, pulsion.

Born in Rome, Simone Cardini studied composition and piano; then he perfected his studies with Solbiati and Fedele. In international masterclasses and academies, he developed his aesthetic approach thanks to the tutelage of, amongst others, Haas, Gervasoni, Hosokawa, Bedrossian.

His compositions, selected and awarded in many international competitions, have been played in Europe, Russia, China and USA, in eminent expositions and festivals by Orchestra of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, Klangforum Wien, Neue Vocalsolisten, Prometeo Ensemble, IEMA, Divertimento Ensemble, MDI, Musiques Nouvelles, Ginot, Telari, Orchestra of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and conducted by Angius, Volkov, Corlay, Nawri, Dronov, Dessy, Battista, Baba, Gorli.His works are published by Ed. Suvini Zerboni, the work Threshold is published by Universal Edition (2017).

His paper Music and Architecture – Aesthetic and sociological implications has been published in the book Musica & Architettura, Nuova Cultura Ed. (2012).